Without Heroes
by PineHead0
Summary: There were heroes in Albion once, but this isn't a story about them— When ex-bandit, Fischer discovers that his husband has gone missing he sets out with some old friends to find him, but the search is a long one and every day more people are going missing, Balverines are flooding the roads, and without heroes to save them it's every man for himself...
1. Pt 1: Taciturn

**Without Heroes**

**Pt. I: Taciturn**

* * *

It's one thing to feel panic in a city where it's always raining and it's always dark, but it's another thing entirely to feel panic when the sun is high in the sky and there are children laughing in the yard next-door. Oakfield was always calm—that was its appeal. Its skies were always blue, its orchards were always bright, and its people were always friendly. So even when Fischer came home to an empty house and no sign of Julian, things in Oakfield were still peaceful, still quiet and the only storms and dark clouds were in his head…

Ellis Fischer was 32 years old and he had lived in Oakfield for two of them. Before that he had mapped caverns and coastlines with his friend Asha, before _that_ he had been in a bandit gang with Asha, and before even that he had been the youngest son of a poor family, wandering the streets of the Old Quarter with Asha. So it was no surprise that when Asha had found a new cavern around Bower Lake, Fischer had been the one she wanted with her to check it out. He had told Julian that it would take maybe a week. He had also told Asha that this was the last trip he could go on—that from now on he wanted to stay in Oakfield with Julian; but Julian wasn't here and Fischer had run out of places in Oakfield to look.

He went through the house twice looking for a note; he stopped at the Sandgoose and the market stalls, and walked through the fields and orchards asking people along the way. No one could tell him anything. He talked to his neighbors and he even visited the Temple of Light. No one had seen Julian in days. And life in Oakfield was still going on without him, as if he had never gone missing.

He told himself not to jump to any conclusions and did a search of the house again. All the clothes were in the wardrobe, none of Julian's things were gone and the extra money they hid under the floorboard upstairs was still there. Wherever Julian was, he hadn't prepared to go there; he was just gone…


	2. Chapter 1

**3 days earlier—**

"Here it is," Asha said, gesturing toward the yawning mouth of a cave, "What do you think?"

It had taken them a good two days walk and half a day's worth of cutting through forests and crossing streams, but Asha did always have a knack for finding things that others couldn't.

Asha smiled, "I'm thinking hobbe den," she said.

"That or wolves," Fischer replied.

Asha pulled off her hat to wipe her brow, "we can handle either," she said.

Asha was taller than Fischer, nearly 6'4, and wore her black hair cropped short and straight. Dark eyed and dark skinned, Asha wore men's breeches, a woman's blouse, and heavy workman's gloves. And on her belt she wore the same sword that she had for the last ten years; she called it Tempest.

"You been inside yet?" Fischer asked and Asha shook her head.

"You know me," Asha said, "I always prefer company for this kind of stuff."

Fischer rolled his eyes, "Right," He said.

It had been the same way when they had been kids, Asha would drag him along but only when she was about to do something stupid. Any other day though and she preferred to go off on her own—a lone warrior on a mission. Asha wasn't the type to err on the side of caution—that had always been Fischer's job. Fischer hoped that this wouldn't be another situation that they'd have to get out of through guile and blood, but knowing Asha, that'd be the way she'd prefer it.

"You're my luck, Fischer," Asha smiled, "We'll be fine."

"I'm not your luck," Fischer retorted, "I'm your common sense."

Asha just smiled and put her hat back on. "Let's go," she said, drawing Tempest from its sheath. Fischer lit a torch and followed her.

The cave turned out to be a series of caverns and the first thing that Fischer noticed was how cold it was, and as they descended deeper and deeper it only got colder. The second thing was the smell—it smelled like age and dirt and death. The first two were smells that Fischer was familiar with, having explored so many caverns, but not one that he had ever gotten used to. Normally it wouldn't concern him but added with the smell of death and decay that typically meant only one thing—hobbes.

Apparently thinking the same thing, Asha grinned, "Told you," she said.

Fishcer drew one of his pistols, "That you did," he conceded.

It wouldn't be their first run-in with hobbes, they'd had several. Back when they'd been in a bandit gang led by a man named Thag, they'd cleared out dozens of caves for him to store stolen goods in. And after they'd quit Thag's gang to join another—which proved fortuitous since Thag was killed not a week later—their new leader, Jackson, had exterminated hobbes wherever they found them on principle. And after leaving the bandit life altogether and becoming explorers and adventurers, still Fischer and Asha came across hobbes at least once in every journey they went on. Even so, there was always something about hobbe dens that still unnerved Fischer and as the tunnel widened into a bigger chamber, Fischer was reminded why.


	3. Chapter 2

_Jackson was one of the few people that Fischer had ever met who didn't consider the legends of hobbe's child stealing as just a fable; in fact, Jackson seemed to have a personal vendetta against the creatures. Whenever they found caverns Jackson was the first one through the opening and the last one out and he would kill them with such vehemence, such violence that it had almost startled his men the first few times he'd come out of the dens covered in hobbe blood. There had been times when they could have easily passed by caves, could have easily ignored or avoided hobbes but Jackson would hear nothing of the sort and it didn't matter if it would screw up a schedule or take them out of their way. And Fischer couldn't help but wonder if this vendetta had anything to do with the little blonde daughter in pigtails and ribbons that Jackson had mentioned maybe once when he'd been drunk and then never brought up again…_

* * *

It was the laughing that you would hear before you saw them— a strangled sort of cackle. Fischer heard it echoing right as they came within feet of the bigger chamber.

"Here we go," he muttered.

Asha was the first one through, her sword in her right hand.

There were at least a dozen hobbes, some sitting on broken furniture, some playing with children's toys, but all of them looked up when Asha charged in.

"Come get it you bastards," she shouted.

A smaller one ran at her first, a club in his hand, Asha sent it staggering with a hard kick to the ribs and then speared it through the head. Two more circled her but Asha was a force of wild, hard fury and with a few fast movements she had sliced one's throat and had chopped off the other's arms.

"C'mon Fischer," she said, "Don't make me kill them all myself!"

While Asha preferred a long sword, Fischer was more of a pistol man and while he wore a cutlass on his belt he preferred a gun; the cutlass was more for show—it wasn't that he didn't know how to use it, a sword just didn't feel as natural to him as it did to Asha.

Asha had always been the brawler, the loud, in your face kind of personality that never backed down. And Fischer had always been the observer, the one who kept everything at a distance, and waited until things got close and familiar and in his sights.

One of the larger hobbes noticed Fischer, hopped down from a table and lumbered toward him. Fischer aimed three quick shots at its head, knocking its makeshift helmet off. It kept coming and Fischer took one step back, two more shots to its left knee and then it slowed. Asha came up behind it and Tempest severed its spine. The rest of the hobbes all descended on them in a mob and for the next few moments it was just a melee of instinct versus instinct, reaction versus reaction and by the end of it their clothes were covered in hobbe blood and bodies littered the floor.

Fischer took one last wary scan of the chamber before taking a long breath and holstering his pistol. Asha bent over her knees and grinned at him, "Now didn't that alone make it worth coming here?" She stretched and wiped her sword off on one of the hobbe's ill-fitted vests.

While Asha sheathed her sword Fischer looked around them and felt that uneasiness return. The hobbes had somehow carted furniture here—there were cracked wooden tables covered in half-melted candles, chairs missing their legs, benches and desks and stools all covered in blood and dirt and cobwebs. Carved wooden horses and dirt-stained dolls were stacked on some of the desks; wooden soldiers with cracked paint, toy instruments and ships and carriages. And piled in a corner were stacks of clothes—overalls and jackets and gowns and dresses, all of them child-sized.

"I hate hobbes," Asha said from behind him, kicking one of the corpses.

"Yeah," Fischer said, still thinking.

"Well, that's that I guess," Asha said, "Too bad that there's not much else here."

"We were just supposed to clear it out right? What did you expect?"

Asha shrugged and grabbed a model ship from the ground, its rigging tangled, "Something bigger, better, I don't know." She sighed and tossed the ship over her shoulder, "Oh well, at least we got some excitement right?"

"Sure," Fischer said.

"Dammit I was so sure…I mean it was so overgrown I thought—" Asha shook her head and then rolled up her sleeves "Well, let's head back."

Fischer took one last look at the toys and the pile of clothes and then followed Asha, unable to stop thinking about hobbes and Jackson's daughter until they were above ground again.


End file.
